Proprietary Engines

Famous vehicle firms like Kenworth, Railton, Jensen, ERF, Morgan and Peterbilt have never made their own engines. Instead they have relied on outside specialists. Since the dawn of motoring firms like De Dion-Bouton and Aster have provided power for other manufacturers' chassis. Until the numbers of car makers were decimated by takeovers and bankruptcies around 1930 up to half of all the hundreds of models available on both sides of the Atlantic had proprietary engines. However. they were seldom amongst the best sellers and afterwards it was diesels for commercial vehicles and niche market cars that kept the engine specialists going. From the 1950s on the new breed of limited production sports cars like TVR and Marcos used other makers' engines, by then usually from mass-produced cars such as Ford. Thereafter, the few remaining proprietary engine makers tended to cater for the upsurge in diesel vehicles. The stories behind these continuous developments in the motor industry make fascinating reading, whilst the illustrations confirm Dorman's famous slogan: 'The heart of the car is its engine'.